Fighting the Current
by Leona Rose
Summary: And maybe, she thinks, maybe dreams of Prim won't leave her feeling as empty when she wakes up, if she has Haymitch by her side.
1. Fighting the Current

_No wonder Finnick liked the water so much, _Katniss thinks to herself as she watches the ocean sprawled in front of her in its azure-blue and sea-green mantle glittering with dancing sunlight. She takes note of the way it looks as though cresting waves are chasing one another, eager to overtake the one in front, either dying out before they can, or cresting in their own moment to reach her feet as sudsy-white seafoam. And it's a little blinding because of the sun, but she can't look away, and the smell of fish and hot sand and seaweed is a little overwhelming at first but not as overwhelming as the heavy feeling in her chest that Prim should be here to see this, or her father here to breathe open, salty sea air and not the poisonous fumes from mines deep underground.

Prim should be next to her, digging up little shells with holes naturally in the tops of them and stringing them on a thin rope to make into a necklace, or a crown, or finding some medical use for seaweed or _something_. But her absence is so heavily felt that it in itself is a presence pressing on Katniss's chest. And she feels the now-familiar tightening in her throat that signals the onset of grief—no, the continuance of grief—and almost always tears, but she swallows hard and fights it back and when she sees her hands clenched into fists around handfuls of sand, she decides it's a good time to go swimming.

So she swims for hours and loses herself in the current and has to fight it to swim back from where she drifted, and she swims until she's so exhausted all she can think about is the nap she'll take to make the time between now and supper disappear. She falls asleep almost as soon as her head hits the pillow at her mother's house, in her mother's bed, and dreams of Prim making her shell necklaces.

When her mother gently shakes her awake for dinner, she reacts by wrapping her fingers tight around her mother's wrist and yanking her down to her level; her mother's wide, sad eyes bring her out of half-consciousness and already the immense guilt is crushing her.

"I'm sorry," she says in a voice thick from sleep. "It's—"

"I know, Katniss," her mother's tone is warm but still holds a hint of fear. "You don't have to explain. Come on, it's time to eat."

Haymitch, who accompanied Katniss on the trip, is already at the table, half-empty glass of wine in his hand, though she can tell he's pacing himself out of respect for her mother. Peeta stayed behind in District 12, though it's not as though he and Katniss are anything more than friends now; she told him it's because she isn't sure who she is now and she needs to find out, while he smiled and told her to take the time she needs. But when she hears him scream from his nightmares, she goes to his house and speaks softly to him, and helps him remember that she's not shiny. And sometimes he stays with her through hers, and for all of these things she loves him. But she's not sure it can go beyond friendship anymore, at least not in her current state.

Haymitch didn't even ask if she wanted him to come along; he showed up at her house with a half-zipped bag of clothes and a bottle of white liquor while she was still packing, dropped it on the kitchen table and sat down, propping his feet up next to his bag. She scoffed, but didn't argue.

And still, no matter how much Haymitch's presence comforts her on this trip, Prim's empty spot at the table screams in her mind. And she knows her mother can feel it, too.

By the time they're done with dinner and making small talk and dessert and post-dinner drinks, which really isn't anything but Haymitch continuing his habit and Katniss finally deciding she enjoys the taste of wine more than she dislikes it, and likes the way it spreads warmth over her cheeks, blossoming out from her chest, it's dark outside but her pre-dinner nap made her feel quite awake. She says nothing more than she's going for a walk, and goes out into the breezy evening.

The stars unfold across the sky, and she likes the way they pulse just as the ocean pulses to the shoreline and back again. She finds herself on the shore again, feet wetting in the seafoam-water as the tide rises higher than earlier in the day. She's wearing a dress her mother bought for her, a long, sleeveless, drape-y sort of thing that's less like a dress and more of a wrap, with a rope around the waist to tie it together. It comes down to over her feet, and it seems keeping it dry is out of the question here. It makes her feel uncomfortable—it's too much fabric, really—but she doesn't want to hurt her mother's feelings so she keeps it on. But she would rather be in her hunting gear, without the soft leather boots so she can still feel the shift of the wet sand between her toes and the wash of the crested waves.

Then she realises she isn't alone, and wonders how she could have missed that fact before now as the scent of wine wafts by her.

"Out for a night stroll, huh?" says Haymitch, less drunk than usual, which makes for more coherency.

"Observant, huh?" she retorts before glancing at him.

He hasn't shaved in quite a few days—not that that's a new sight—and he's wearing a loose white shirt and loose cream-colored pants, which looks odd on him. Very not-Haymitch, too beach-y. But it's not bad, and he looks more comfortable than she is in the dress. Then again, he probably doesn't care much about what he wears as long as he's got some sort of alcohol running through his bloodstream and he's not having to socialise with people dressed ludicrously at the Capitol. The bright colours that inundated the Capitol stick out in her memories.

Maybe he doesn't even think about those things anymore. She knows she tries to forget.

"No need for hostility, sweetheart," he half-laughs, now beside her and keeping pace.

"I don't need to tell you it's how I am," she says, even if that makes the statement contradictory.

"Yeah, you're right." Suddenly he stops and grabs her arm lightly, pulling her back and turning her to face the ocean which they can hear more than see even as the moonlight skirts along certain peaks. Maybe he's more inebriated than she thought.

"Look over there," he points off in the distance, to a brightly-lit something out far on the water. "That's a barge. Probably a passenger one. And look there—" he points to another, off a bit to the left of the first one, "at the smaller one."

She isn't sure what the purpose of this is, but finds it nice anyway. It's just the sort of conversational drivel to fill the gaps of silence between them, even though they both know they don't have to voice the volumes they speak silently. They proved that in the arena.

"I hope they're happier barges now," she says with an almost harsh chuckle.

"You've seen the way this place rose out of the ashes, or, y'know, some other cliché saying like that," he shakes his head, and she _knows _he's drunker than he first seemed. "Of course they're happier."

"Are you?" she asks with a sudden burst of desire to know more about the facts she already knows because she feels it too.

"Not really, I guess," he shrugs. "I mean, it's not like anger goes away totally, but a little with the longer it's been since we all started over. But _we_—" any living victor of the Games, she knows, "can never be free of it." He hiccups. "There'll always be a lot of anger here. But I guess I'm more okay with Snow dead than I would be otherwise."

"Eloquent as ever," she says, but a wiry smile twists at her lips.

It's then she realises his hand is still around her arm, and for a brief moment of memories overtaking her, she feels afraid because what if he's going to pull his sleeping-knife on her and put it against the vein in her throat? But it passes almost as quickly as it came, because it's Haymitch and he cares about her. Maybe not in the way he should, because she's sure he still probably likes Peeta more than her, but enough for it to matter.

"Afraid I might run?"

He looks down and cocks a half-grin. "Why would you? It's such a nice night."

"This dress would trip me up."

"Then you'd get sand in your mouth. Nobody likes a girl with sand in her mouth."

She laughs at the ridiculously half-drunk statement.

"I can think of plenty of people who wouldn't have minded if I choked on sand just a few months ago. And there are a few pockets of people who are still loyal to the Capitol, so I'm sure they'd like it if I lost my voice again."

"Loyal's a relative term," he snorts derisively.

"Why are you out here?" she asks somewhat suddenly, turning to face him fully.

He tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. "What, I can't enjoy the beach too?"

"Well, yeah," she shifts her gaze. "I mean, does it make you sad? You knew Finnick a lot longer than I did, and it makes me think of him and—and, well, everyone I lost from that because I keep thinking they should be here to enjoy it." She swallows hard. Expressing her feelings is hard, but it comes more easily with Haymitch. "But he was—you know—"

"A fellow mentor, yeah," he looks up at the sky and starts drumming a finger against her arm, "but you know, however long you've known someone doesn't have to mean they affect you less."

She's shocked at how much he must be concentrating to get all this out—not that he's not smart even when he's totally gone into utter drunkenness, but even standing in the strong ocean breeze seems to be a challenge for him now. That's probably why he's still holding onto her arm. His side of the conversation surprises her just as much as her willingness to open up about these feelings. But she knows Haymitch will understand better than anybody else, even—especially?—Gale, or Peeta, or her mother.

And maybe that's why he's sharing his half, too. Because she will understand on levels nobody else can. The way they feel things is so similar, deep in the gut and it's a shame Katniss doesn't like alcohol more or she would be downing the stuff frequently. And he's doing it not as frequently out of respect for her mother, but she wonders if it's already taking a toll on him. Has he slept worse? Better? No change at all? Does he dream about the horrors he faced and watched Peeta and Katniss face and the assassination of President Coin and the bloodbaths of Cornucopias and rescue missions and seemingly endless propos with Katniss's voiceovers and—

No. Those are Katniss's nightmares. His go further back.

Or has he even slept, knowing these things can plague him while asleep too? Sometimes more, if it's a particularly bad night. For as much as Katniss knows him, can understand him on microscopic wavelengths, she doesn't know as much as she feels like she should about him.

"You've been thinking about Prim this whole trip," he says, finally letting go of her arm. Already she misses the contact. "I've been thinking about my brother, too. He would have loved this."

She stares at him, trying to ignore the way the breeze made her skin break out in gooseflesh, as if his hand on her arm was her one source of warmth. This is the first she's ever heard him say beyond telling her of Snow's murder of them.

"How old was he?"

"Ten."

_Even younger than Prim, _she thinks with a small sigh.

"I dreamed Prim was making me shell necklaces," she turns her head to stare back out over the water. "It was comforting, but it made me feel worse when I woke up. And then when my mother woke me..." she trails off, the lump in her throat too thick to speak around.

She feels his arm encircle her shoulders and she moves toward him naturally and without thinking, as she had so many times during the Revolution, wrapping her arms around him, her face pressed against his shoulder.

"You just didn't have a knife," he says softly, and she laughs but it comes out as a choked sob and she feels the betrayal of hot tears as they course down her cheeks.

"I come to visit my mother all the way out in District Four and this is how I treat her, like she's a threat," she mumbles against his shirt, breathing in the scent of his shirt, of his skin, of the wine still on his breath all mingled with the salty smell of the ocean.

"What's not normal for anyone who wasn't in the Games is so normal for us it doesn't need explaining," he says, pushing his hand through her hair before lifting her chin and stepping back to look in her face. "Your mother understands, even if it's hard on her. Don't feel bad for something you can't control."

"That's easy for you to say," she snaps, unsure of where the sudden anger comes from—maybe her emotions are just too strong for her to get a hold on them. "You drown all your guilt in alcohol."

"Tch." He lets his hand drop back to his side. "Sweetheart, I'm not the one you need to be mad at."

She swallows hard.

"I know. I don't know why I feel like this. Like I can't figure out just what to feel, like there's a storm of all these different emotions rolling around in my chest and I just can't decide on one. And more than anything I'm just so _tired _of feeling this way."

"_That's _what I drown in alcohol," he says with a harsh laugh. "That, and the memory of how close you were to throwing that knife right through my hand that time."

She blushes at the memory of all her anger toward the drunken mentor she hardly knew then.

"I'm still not sorry for that."

"You shouldn't be, it impressed me."

"Oh, yes, and we all know I _live _to impress Haymitch Abernathy," she says with a laugh, but wonders how much of that was said in jest. For a time, she did, to get sponsors—but she fought for Prim.

"That's your first mistake."

Then she looks up at his face, really looks him, and sees in his grey Seam eyes—just like hers—a range of emotions she can't begin to describe. His lack of severe intoxication has brought these to the surface where she can see them, but she can't decode them. And his lips are parted in a question she didn't really register, but when he notices she's staring at them, he asks what she's doing, and she isn't sure but before she can change her mind she tilts her head up to taste them with hers because after all, she doesn't mind wine now.

And his hands press against her back as he barely moves to slide his lips against hers, and she doesn't know if his eyes are asking questions because she's closed hers and she doesn't want to know, because everything in this feels so much better than when she did this with Peeta because that warm feeling in her gut is blossoming out more quickly than ever and she only vaguely registers opening her mouth to him because it seems like the natural thing to do. And it seems as though the only person she wants to comfort her is Haymitch again. It has always been Haymitch, she realises. But then something's changed and he drops his arms but then pushes her back, and he's holding a hand up to his head, and she wonders if he's still a little drunk.

"This isn't what you want," he says slowly, as if stringing together sentences is still hard.

"How can you say that?" her hands clench into fists at her side. "If I didn't want it—_you_—I wouldn't have done it."

"I'm not good for you," he shakes his head. "Your mother—"

"Has no say in my life. How can she, when she's all the way out here? She hasn't since my father died, anyway." She chokes back more tears. "And what do you mean, you're not good for me? Peeta was _too _good for me—you said it yourself. None of us deserve him, you said it yourself!"

"Somebody who drowns a bunch of shitty feelings in alcohol doesn't deserve _you_, sweetheart."

"Don't say that," she steps closer again. "All I've done for the past _year _is sleep away everything, and not even good sleep. I can't get away from anything in my sleep unless someone's there, and it used to be Peeta, but it took me this long to realise that I want it to be you."

She says all of this in a rush, and she hadn't even consciously realised she wanted it to be Haymitch until she said it, and that's why she went to him all those times, like on the train or in District 13 or the President's mansion in the Capitol; that's why even though he didn't see her much in District 12 after they returned, his nearness comforted her, because he knew her more than most—even Peeta—and he didn't judge her for it. With Peeta, she's constantly afraid of his judgement, because he _is _so good. But Haymitch doesn't judge, doesn't care enough to and even if he did, he knows her because he knows himself.

"I don't know how you made it alone for all these years before Peeta and I were reaped," she says, grabbing him by the shoulders, "but I don't want that for you anymore. And I'm afraid we might drift away after years have gone by."

Then she grabs the front of his shirt and pulls him into a kiss again, this time harder and more demanding, and this time he matches her passion and ferocity with this own, sucking her bottom lip between his teeth and tugging, his hands pressing so hard into her hips she thinks he might bruise her, but it makes her feel alive more than anything in the past few months—the past year, really—has, and she can't stand the thought of losing that feeling again. And she thinks he can feel her desperation because the way he moves against her seems to say _I'm not going anywhere, girl on fire_.

She decides it's okay to lose herself in the current this time. And maybe, she thinks, maybe dreams of Prim won't leave her feeling as empty when she wakes up, if she has Haymitch by her side.

-o-

(A/N: Good god Katniss is a hard character to write. This gave me quite a challenge, and I'm not completely happy with it, but it's something and I want to contribute to this ship as much as I can!)


	2. Rolling Thunder

"The brain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination, made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain, danced like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through moving masks."

-Oscar Wilde, _The Picture of Dorian Gray_

-o-

It's the barely-morning after Haymitch pointed out the barges to Katniss, but it took him almost this long to fall asleep because he wasn't thinking about how he pointed barges out to her and showed the difference between passenger and cargo barges. Instead he's thinking about how he kissed her. No, how _she _kissed _him_ first—but oh, he'd certainly kissed her back—and then they'd had words, and then kissed again, so really the technicalities aren't important, but the fact that he couldn't shut his mind off about them until midnight is, especially when he heard Katniss's breathing slow and even out not half an hour after they returned from their walk. Now it's just after two and Haymitch is dreaming. He wanted to act a little better for Katniss's mother, which only means he didn't have as much alcohol. As a result, his dreams start out as twisting shapes in the dark and murmured phrases of moments passed, but slowly shift and morph to become unusually vivid, something he has worked for years to avoid.

He is in his arena, but on the run and without Maysilee. Then, he hears it—a distant sound, almost like a hurt animal. He's not really hungry, but he could use the food; he realises it may be a trap, but there's also the possibility that it's not. And that's what makes him go. The sound grows louder as he creeps closer to what he assumes is the source, but the landscape is shifting; it's becoming woodsier and thicker and he hears a light humming behind him and glances to see the electric fence that ran along District 12's edge to the woods. He pushes through dense brush, but he knows he's close, so close he can feel the heat from whatever is making the noise, and he sees where it is. He lets his eyes dart around for any traps or snares, because maybe this is a hallucination, a trick played by Gamemakers to keep the program interesting for the viewers—but he sees none. And so, gripping his knife, he pushes aside thick foliage that leads to the sound, louder than the anthem played at night—and what he sees makes him reel backward.

Katniss is lying on her side, her knees curled up to her chest, her hands over her ears as she whimpers. She is the source of the sound, and the source of the way the breath goes out of Haymitch's lungs, and the twist in his gut and the terror crashing through his veins and how he's frozen with fear of what to do. He shakes her but she stays in the position, and keeps whimpering, and whimpering, until a cannon goes off and—

And Haymitch is sitting up on the extra mattress Mrs. Everdeen bought specifically for his accompanying stay with Katniss, and it's dark but a candle is burning its last few inches of wax on the small table in the room they're in, and there's enough light to see Katniss and it's almost worse than the dream. Because here, in real life, she is three-dimensional, and she's three-dimensionally sitting up with her knees tucked to her chest, her three-dimensional hands three-dimensionally over her ears, but her eyes aren't closed; no, her eyes are filled with tears and she's staring right at Haymitch—no, again, right _through _Haymitch, as though she wants him but doesn't see him, doesn't realise he's there. And he knows exactly what's going through her mind as a crash of thunder rattles the windows around them because he dreamed it, and it takes half a second for him to register the sound of rain with the thunder but he's not thinking about it as he gets up and stumbles over to the bed.

The sinking of the mattress on the right side of her seems to alert her to his presence, and she looks at him—three-dimensionally, _really _looks at him—and she swallows hard but he shakes his head and tucks a lock of hair behind her ear before placing his hand on her three-dimensional knee, rubbing small circles on the inside of it, making sure she holds his gaze. He's still got a buzz from the earlier wine so he's sure he appears at least a little unfocused, but maybe not because her trembling seems to become less noticeable, at least. He figures less noticeable is better than constant, and when she moves her head a certain way he knows what she's asking. He moves up to sit next to her, and she curls into him and he can't help but think about how natural it is for his arm to go around her shoulders, and how it always has been, which is just the weirdest goddamn thing because he'd been alone for twenty-four years. He can't even remember the colour of his girl's eyes, or remember what he said the last time he saw her. She's only two-dimensional now, and she's faded over the years.

But Katniss...Katniss is very alive. Especially when he hasn't visited for a while and she comes over to his house, barging in without knocking and shouting at him to clean up the place, and he endures it because, bless her sweet soul, she usually times it so the alcohol isn't quite rebelling against him yet and her voice isn't an unbelievably loud thing that makes his head pound—not at that point. It's then he sees her passion redirected, her frustrations with the gentleness and the goodness of Peeta, and it's like she has to have a dose of Haymitch to calm her, to make her feel not so alone in the world, to make her feel a little better because if anything she's not him, and—

And Haymitch wonders why she kissed him again, other than the need for human contact.

He's stroking her hair and he feels tiny grains of sand still between his fingers but she smells like wine and the sand and the waves and salty skin, and he can't think of anything but those things as she lets him hold her and how very vulnerable she is in this moment and letting him see her that way, but she's never had that problem, has she? He's always been the one she lets see her like that, because she knows he has no room to judge, nor any care to. He's got other things to worry about, like how much alcohol he can steal or legally obtain and stow away that day. Important things like that. But was her kiss vulnerability or strength? Were the two intertwined like one of Finnick's complicated knots? Why is it so hard for him to accept as something she would willingly seek from Haymitch Abernathy, of all people?

Because he, above all others, knows what a shitty person he can be.

"Thanks." Her voice is so soft, so close to the silence she exhibited in the Capitol, that he wonders if he imagined it. But her eyes are open again and she's looking up at him, and she lowers her right hand from her ear and reaches over to entwine her fingers with his hand against her upper arm. Her left hand is still covering her ear—the same one she'd injured in her first Games from the mine explosion. He wonders if she can still hear better out of it.

"It took me five years to be able to sleep through a thunderstorm," he says. "And that was with alcohol."

"Only five?" He knows the undertone of that seemingly harmless question is, _I feel like I'll never get over the sound of thunder_.

"Yeah, well, sometimes I have my moments, too, sweetheart."

She still winces with the next thunderclap but he just tightens his arm around her and squeezes her hand and she shifts her head so he can feel her breath on his neck and it sends shivers down his spine, his skin breaking out in gooseflesh; he swallows hard as he wonders just how much of that is related to booze still pushed along in his bloodstream.

Then he feels her lips brush against his neck and when he looks down at her she moves up to capture his mouth with hers and his right hand slides up the outside of her left leg, fingertips brushing at the hem of her shorts and he can't think of much else but how soft her skin is and how he can barely taste any wine on her tongue but a little bit of saltiness and he wonders how many tears she cried while she stared at him, willing him to wake up but never coming over to him. Thunder rumbles far off but she doesn't jerk or stiffen; _you're making progress, sweetheart_, he thinks. Then her other hand has left her ear finally and she's dragging both her hands through his hair, and his fingers are now drifting across her stomach, the muscles of which flutter and shift beneath them. And her skin is so warm and he wonders if it will taste as salty as it smells but that thought—above all—pulls him out of the fog of the moment and he pulls back, resting his forehead against hers.

"We should try to sleep."

She bristles with what he assumes is going to be a protest, but she must realise he's right because she lets herself sigh before giving a small, soft kiss on the corner of his mouth.

"Yeah, I think you're right. Stay with me? Until I fall asleep?

"You don't even have to ask, sweetheart."

They shift around until she's lying with his chest against her back, his arm draped over her side, and as much as he thinks about how the warmth of another body as he sleeps would be fucking _amazing_, he slowly and carefully detaches himself after her breathing's slow and steady again and goes back to his now-cold mattress, and as he draws the covers up, he's a little sad to be leaving the beach but glad in his own way to be returning to District 12 with her tomorrow—no, later today. Because this place _does _remind him of Finnick, and of his own family, long-dead, but he still can't really conjure the way his girl back then smiled at him.

Katniss fills his mind now—she has ever since he saw her volunteer for Prim, really, filled everyone's mind when she sparked the fires of discontent and spread her wings as the Mockingjay but he can't resist the pull of his eyelids down as sleep overtakes him, and he hopes with his last conscious thought of the night that Katniss doesn't dream of cannons again.

-o-

(**A/N: **Okay, so I decided to, indeed, make this a short-chaptered fic, kind of a chapter trilogy. The next one will be the last of this story (and probably bump the rating up to M). I hope you enjoyed this even though it's a little shorter than the last. Katniss's characterization is still really tough for me, but I hope it's not too bad! Thanks for reading—as always.)


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